This may be a male/female difference, or maybe it’s just me (I am female) but I never had crushes on guys in elementary or middle school. And I think I only did in high school because it was the thing to do. I was a very late bloomer in terms of true sexual or romantic interest in men.
My active bisexuality goes back to age 12 or 13. It’s difficult to separate my memories of that time from the sounds of “Crocodile Rock,” “You’re So Vain,” and “American Pie.”
Don’t think it’s a male/female difference; I’m also female, and had crushes on boys at least from the age of 4 (younger, according to my mother, but I don’t remember that).
Everyone always asks, “When did you know that you were gay?” But, nobody asks, “When did you know that you were straight?” Same age.
Now, there are a whole spectrum of disorders that express themselves in ways that could be seen as sexual. I have seen or read cases of people attracted to circus equipment, cabbages, cars, hand tools, and so forth. These folks almost always have traumatic histories. One man wanted his wife to wear sexy clothes and the drive their car literally over him. He dug a pit & would put planks over it, so the wheels would go right over his chest.
Reading back over this, I may have digressed a bit. The point I wanted to make is that normal sexual attraction for homosexuals develops in a manner that entirely parallels heterosexuals. However some people reorient due to profound emotional trauma. It can happen any time up to ~ early 20s.
My datum: 7 years old, i.e. late 1956 or early 1957. I saw a line drawing in a children’s book of a naked boy (side view, no bits showing) and I knew absolutely that that was what I wanted. I wish my father had been like you, so I could have talked to him about it. I finally came out to my parents when I was in my 40’s (of course, they already knew, for all the good that did me).
about 12 when I kissed a babysitter in a game of truth or dare .and then kissed her boyfriend a few minutes later …
Yeah… I knew by first grade I was attracted to females.
Just to give you a data point contrary to the majority so far, I didn’t have any sexual thoughts until puberty, then throughout puberty I had crushes/fantasies about other guys (but mainly girls). That sort of faded away in my later teens. So while I thought I might be bisexual for a while, I think that was just raging puberty hormones and since my early twenties I’ve been quite sure I’m just a straight guy. I wouldn’t have any problem acknowledging anything else but that seems to be the way it is for me.
Just to clarify in my own case, I wasn’t having sexual thoughts at the age of 7. It was more like a powerful emotional attraction.
Right. My own fantasy, at the age of 5, was unmistakably homoerotic. But that doesn’t mean I consciously said to myself “Aha! So I’m attracted to boys!” That would take many years, during which I had female crushes. But there were always random quasi-sexual occurrences with boys (no touching involved), accompanied by strong emotions. That’s why I remember them.
I knew I was attracted to girls before I knew that made me “straight”, or “normal”. That’s because I was young enough at the time that I only knew about sex in the sense of “that’s how babies get made”. Didn’t know jack shit about sexual appetite. Young enough that the way I visualized it, when a mommy and a daddy really want a baby they do this incredibly icky thing and manage to get through it somehow despite no doubt being appalled and embarrassed.
When I became aware that I was really fascinated by girls’ shapes in the place where they were most specifically different from boys, I assumed that was totally kinky and perverted and that I’d be teased forever if anyone ever found out: AHunter3 likes to stare at where girls pee from, ha ha ha! But it was my harmless, if naughty, little secret until well past the point where I’d learned about sexual attraction and appetite and realized what I felt wasn’t unusual after all. Quite mainstream and expected by adults and depicted in movies and books and so on.
Gender was a different matter. I realized in the timeframe between 2nd and 3rd grade (7-9 years old) that I belonged with the girls. At that time, I saw it the way tomboyish girls saw themselves, except the other way around, rebelling against all boy things and boy-expectations foisted on me and going out to prove to the girls I was as good as they were and set out to earn their respect. I never changed allegiances or stopped thinking of myself (and girls) from that viewpoint, but I took it for granted because it had always been so, a difference like being left-handed, you know, no big deal, I’m a girlish boy and proud of it etc.
It was eventually sexual orientation, weirdly enough, that made the gender thing a Big Freaking Deal. I’d been perving secretly about girls’ bodies, like forever, but in junior high and high school and early adulthood heterosexuality was working for masculine boyish boys and I couldn’t get it working for myself. I was a 20 year old virgin in college and mostly well-intentioned people were nudging and urging me to come out. I increasingly felt I was somehow different and worried it was something horribly broken, then it kind of clicked, the pieces fell into place. I was attracted to girls, yeah, but my gender was different, I’d spent a lifetime embracing a sense of self as a girlish boy and no it wasn’t “no big deal” after all.